Within business organizations, educational institutions, and other large entities, individual computers are increasingly connected to each other by means of a network. As the number of computers on a network increases, the complex task of managing the networked computers quickly overwhelms information technology (IT) departments. Currently, real-time analysis is nearly impossible for these systems. A network administrator typically must wait until data is compiled before making changes to individual computers on the network.
Current methods of monitoring individual computers, such as workstations, for a large enterprise are cumbersome and do not collect data quickly enough to be of use in real-time. Current methods rely on remote scans and polling each individual workstation for information, which causes large network overhead and information latency, in some cases returning information that is only partially accurate and too stale for action.